Various publications, including patents, published applications, technical articles and scholarly articles are cited throughout the specification. Each of these cited publications is incorporated by reference herein, in its entirety and for all purposes.
Prodigiosin (represented by tautomeric Formulas (A1) and (A2)) is the parent member of the tripyrrole alkaloid family of natural products that shows potent anti-cancer activity against tumors with mutated p53 proteins.

Activation of p53 can induce cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis through transcriptional regulation of specific target genes. However, p53 is mutated in in more than 50% of humor tumors, making functional reactivation of the p53 pathway an attractive strategy for cancer therapy development. Prodigiosin is able is further able to induce the expression of the p73 protein and disrupt its interaction with mutant p53, thereby rescuing p53 pathway deficiency and promoting anti-tumor effects. Accordingly, it is desirable to identify and synthesize prodigiosin analogs that are suitable as cancer treatments through restoration of the p53 pathway and inducing the expression of the p73 protein.